Level 3: 'Prefer' + 'to' or 'Prefer' = '-ing' ?

1. To find occurrences of ‘prefer to’, in the Keyword window, choose the option ‘begins with’ and type ‘prefer’. This will get you ‘prefers’, ‘preferring’, ‘preferred’ and more.

2. In the ‘associated word’ window, type ‘to’.3. Set the associated word to appear to the right of the keyword – click the correct button.4. Choose a corpus; click ‘Search for concordances’.5. Copy and paste the resulting list into a word processing document.

To find occurrences of ‘prefer –ing’ you need a slightly different approach.

6. In the Keyword Window, choose option ‘ends with’ and type ‘ing’.7. In the ‘associated word’ window, type ‘prefer’.8. Set the associated word to appear to the left of the keyword – click the correct button.9. Choose a corpus; click ‘Search for concordances’.10. Copy and paste the resulting list into a word processing document.11. Repeat these steps 6 to 11 and in step 7 enter variants of ‘prefer’ –‘prefers’, ‘preferred’ and the like.

Try steps 1 to 11 with ‘like’ and any other verbs you can think of.

Send your resulting word lists to me. We can check them together in class.

Can you write an explanation of the difference and post it in a comment?